The 2025 MIT Japan Conference explored future research trends at MIT, highlighting breakthroughs in key areas such as Soft Materials and Mechanics, Biomedical Innovation, and the impact of Generative AI (GAI) on the Work of the Future.
Noya is working to deliver the high-quality, permanent, carbon removal that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has identified as necessary in order to limit global warming below 1.5℃. The company’s proprietary direct air capture (DAC) system produces a significant amount of clean water (6 million m3 per year per full-scale facility) and unlocks grid services in addition to high-quality carbon removal credits. The team enjoys strong support from pioneering carbon removal buyers, including Shopify, Watershed, and one of the largest university endowments, as well as leading investors including USV, Collab Fund, EQT, and DNX Ventures.
Turning CO2 into Carbon-Neutral Industrial Chemicals Evan Haas, Co-Founder & CEO, Helix Carbon Helix Carbon: https://helixcarbon.co/
Helix Carbon is decarbonizing heavy industry by transforming emitted CO2 into carbon-neutral fuels & chemicals including CO, ethylene, and syngas. Born from MIT innovations, these electrochemical systems use inexpensive catalysts with high stability to convert flue gas directly into these cost-competitive carbon feedstocks. Helix builds drop-in electrolyzers that integrate with existing direct reduced iron & petrochemical facilities to upcycle CO2 emissions into chemical feedstocks, enabling green steel, polycarbonate, polyurethane, and more.
The Future of Industrial Cooling Maher Damak, Co-Founder & CEO, Infinite Cooling Infinite Cooling: https://www.infinite-cooling.com/
Cooling towers are ubiquitous in industrial and commercial settings. They are critical pieces of equipment but also major sources of energy and water consumption. They are used across a wide range of applications, including power generation, manufacturing, chemical processing, and HVAC systems for large buildings and data centers.
At Infinite Cooling, we begin with TowerPulse, our advanced sensors and software package that leverages physics-informed machine learning to optimize cooling tower operations. TowerPulse enables real-time monitoring and predictive maintenance, ensuring optimal performance, reducing energy consumption, and minimizing operational downtime.
Building on this, our WaterPanel technology uses electrostatic fields to captures pure, demineralized water directly from cooling tower plumes. This innovative solution provides an alternative demineralized water source while eliminating visible plumes, helping facilities conserve water, lower costs, and reduce environmental impact. Together, these technologies address key sustainability and efficiency challenges in industrial cooling.
Activate Customer Data with Decision Intelligence Abhi Yadav, Co-Founder & CEO, iCustomer iCustomer: https://www.icustomer.ai/
GTM teams are overwhelmed by fragmented data across platforms, leading to ineffective targeting, false signals loop, wasted time, and frustrated buyers and sellers. This chaos results in high acquisition costs, bad retention and missed opportunities.
iCustomer's agentic AI platform unifies first-party and third-party customer data to deliver actionable intelligence. The system automates decision-making and orchestrates optimized GTM plays, enabling teams to execute with precision and efficiency.
Our Identity Resolution Engine creates immutable IDs mapped to hundreds of external data sources, while our Decision Intelligence Layer activates optimal GTM plays powered by AI Agents. The platform continuously optimizes CAC, LTV, and Ad ROI through machine learning and real-time market signals.
AI Driven Bloodless Blood Tests Sean (Shunsuke) Matsuoka, Co-Founder & COO, GPx GPx: https://gpx.ai/
In an aging society, the number of heart failure patients is increasing, making the prevention of readmissions and reduction of medical costs critical issues. Remote monitoring using invasive implantable devices has proven effective in reducing heart failure readmissions, but its use remains limited.
To address this, GPx has developed an algorithm that non-invasively predicts signs of heart failure exacerbation. This algorithm was created using clinical trial data from monitoring 245 heart failure patients over 6 months to a year at eight facilities, including the Mayo Clinic in the U.S. The algorithm links digital biomarker data with vital blood tests (NT-proBNP and creatinine) to achieve high-precision prediction and early medical intervention.
Additionally, with a grant of 1.2 billion yen provided through AMED, we are collaborating with the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center (Dr. Chisato Izumi) to conduct a clinical trial involving 400 patients starting April 2025. The trial will be conducted at the National Cerebral and Cardiovascular Center, Kyoto University, Kobe University, and Kochi University.
Furthermore, at this year's MIT Japan Conference, we will unveil a groundbreaking point-of-care (POC) potassium testing device for the first time. At the conference, we aim to explore the feasibility of applying our technology to other conditions (such as kidney failure, pulmonary arterial hypertension, and cardio-oncology) and to assess the potential for providing algorithm-based services for heart failure patients within Japan.
Innovation in Manufacturing Biomedicines: From New Modalities to Scalable, Accessible Therapeutics Stacy Springs Executive Director, MIT Center for Biomedical Innovation (CBI)
Biologic medicines (e.g., monoclonal antibodies, gene and cell therapies, vaccines) are critical to treating and preventing disease. Recent regulatory approvals of exciting new biomedicines such as cell and gene therapies provide new hope to patients who have exhausted alternative therapies or suffer from a rare disease with no other treatment. To help patients access these medicines, biopharmaceutical companies must be able to manufacture very complex molecules safely, reliably, and in the quantities needed, which can range from the very large (industrialized) scale to the very small (personalized) scale. This presentation will review the challenges in manufacturing these complex biologic medicines as well as approaches to modernization of biomanufacturing with the goal of providing broadened access to biologic medicines. Dr. Springs will describe multiple approaches that MIT’s Center for Biomedical Innovation and collaborators are taking to achieve this goal, including continuous manufacturing, novel purification strategies, novel analytical technologies for assessing novel product quality attributes, and rapid methods for sterility and viral safety assessment.
Merging Humans and Machines: Innovation and Translation Xuanhe Zhao Uncas (1923) and Helen Whitaker Professor, MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering
Whereas human tissues and organs are mostly soft, wet, and bioactive, machines are commonly hard, dry, and abiotic. Merging humans and machines is of imminent importance in addressing grand societal challenges in health, environment, sustainability, security, education, and happiness in life. However, merging humans and machines is extremely challenging due to their fundamentally contradictory properties. At MIT Zhao Lab, we invent, understand, and facilitate the translation of soft materials and systems to form long-term, robust, non-fibrotic, and high-efficacy interfaces between humans and machines. In this talk, I will discuss three examples of innovation and translation for merging humans and machines: - the first fast and tough bioadhesive capable of replacing sutures for hemostasis and wound sealing (paper in Nature 2019, 2024; translation by SanaHeal Inc). - the first soft neurovascular robot capable of remotely treating stroke patients (paper in Nature 2018; translation by Magnendo Inc). - the first wearable ultrasound capable of imaging diverse human organs over 48 hours (paper in Science 2022; translation by Sonologi Inc).
Innovations at Interfaces: Energy & Sustainability to Biomedical Technologies Kripa Varanasi Professor, MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering
Physico-chemical interactions at interfaces are ubiquitous across multiple industries, including energy, decarbonization, healthcare, water, agriculture, transportation, and consumer products. In this talk, Professor Varanasi summarizes how surface/interface chemistry, morphology, and thermal and electrical properties can be engineered across multiple length scales to achieve significant efficiency enhancements in a wide range of processes. These approaches involve both passive and active manipulation of interfaces.
Varanasi first describes a variety of slippery interfaces that can significantly reduce interfacial friction for efficient dispensing of viscous products, enhance thermal transport in heating and cooling systems, provide anti-icing solutions, and create self-healing barriers for protection against scaling. Active strategies are also discussed, such as engineering charge transfer to alter multiphase flows for applications like water harvesting, anti-dust systems for solar panels, and reducing agricultural runoff to address critical challenges at the energy-water and water-agriculture nexus. Varanasi highlights efforts in decarbonization and the energy transition, focusing on CO₂ capture and conversion as well as battery energy storage systems. These efforts include enhancing electrochemical and biological methods for CO₂ capture and conversion, with recent advancements in CO₂ capture from point sources and direct air capture (DAC), marine CO₂ removal via a pH-swing process using electroactive materials, and electrochemical CO₂ conversion to fuels, ethylene, and other valuable products. Additionally, Varanasi introduces a high-performance rechargeable battery energy storage solution that is free of lithium and cobalt, intrinsically non-flammable, and ideal for stationary storage applications, including utility grids, home storage, microgrids, data centers, warehouses, manufacturing facilities, and chemical plants.
In parallel, Varanasi discusses ongoing research in biomedical technologies, spanning biomanufacturing to ovarian cancer treatment. Surface engineering strategies are presented to prevent thrombosis and biofilm formation, tailor cell adhesion and protein adsorption, and enhance the biomanufacturing value chain. Inspired by slippery surface technologies, Varanasi introduces a novel methodology for subcutaneous injection of highly viscous biologics, expanding the range of injectable formulations and improving healthcare accessibility. Innovative approaches to protein separation via undersaturated crystallization, promoted through in-situ templating, are also described, enabling continuous biomanufacturing. Passive and active techniques for enhancing bioreactors by preventing foam buildup are detailed, with a non-invasive approach that eliminates the need for defoamers, preventing cell death caused by bubble rupture and optimizing reactor space utilization.
Throughout the talk, Varanasi addresses manufacturing and scale-up strategies, robust materials and processes, and entrepreneurial efforts to translate these technologies into impactful products and markets. Insights from the start-up companies co-founded by Varanasi are interwoven with these discussions.
How have some companies experienced dramatic growth and productivity improvement in manufacturing even as their peers struggle to compete? What explains how some manufacturing firms have been faster to adopt new technologies or workforce practices than other firms? This presentation will focus on understanding the operational and technological patterns of high-performing manufacturing firms in the United States. It will emphasize particularly the way that these firms have built on – and in some cases departed from – the Toyota Production System, which has for decades been the paradigm for manufacturing excellence in the United States and abroad.